History and Theory, II

University of Pennsylvania Spring 2004
School of Design
Department of Architecture
Kazys Varnelis, Ph.D.

Architecture 512: History and Theory, II

Description

This course traces the emergence of contemporary issues in the field by exploring architecture since the start of the twentieth century. Although it proceeds roughly in chronological order, it is not a survey. Incoming students should already have a familiarity with the major monuments, figures, and movements of the time. Rather, this course constitutes an advanced theoretical introduction to the key ideas that shape architectural thinking today, introducing topics as overlaying strata, with each new issue adding greater complexity even as previous layers continue to influence the present. Every class addresses specific themes through close readings of pertinent projects within the historical constellation of ideas, values, and technologies that inform them.

Of particular focus for the course is the relationship between architecture and modernity. Modernity is a new form of life, in which Karl Marx aptly wrote, “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his, real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.” If the nineteenth century marks the emergence of a modern civilization, judged by many to be bereft of purpose apart from profit and loss and unceasing growth and change, the twentieth century is defined by attempts to resist that modernity, organize it, and turn it to the advantage of mankind. To this end, this course will trace architecture’s relationship to organizational regimes of modernity such as Fordism, Taylorism, and Post-Fordism, the rise and fall of the machine as an object not to represent but rather to emulate, and the increasing focus on architecture as a matter of process, not product. Throughout, the course will highlight the tension between a drive towards rationalization and an urge to form.

The course has two components: a lecture surveying critical issues through close readings of buildings and a seminar component, led by the teaching assistants, reviewing the week’s lecture and reading while focusing on close readings undertaken by students. Readings will focus on writings by architects while critical texts from both architecture history and outside the discipline establish a context.

University of Pennsylvania Spring 2004
School of Design
Department of Architecture
Kazys Varnelis, Ph.D.

Architecture 512: History and Theory, II

Description

This course traces the emergence of contemporary issues in the field by exploring architecture since the start of the twentieth century. Although it proceeds roughly in chronological order, it is not a survey. Incoming students should already have a familiarity with the major monuments, figures, and movements of the time. Rather, this course constitutes an advanced theoretical introduction to the key ideas that shape architectural thinking today, introducing topics as overlaying strata, with each new issue adding greater complexity even as previous layers continue to influence the present. Every class addresses specific themes through close readings of pertinent projects within the historical constellation of ideas, values, and technologies that inform them.

Of particular focus for the course is the relationship between architecture and modernity. Modernity is a new form of life, in which Karl Marx aptly wrote, “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his, real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.” If the nineteenth century marks the emergence of a modern civilization, judged by many to be bereft of purpose apart from profit and loss and unceasing growth and change, the twentieth century is defined by attempts to resist that modernity, organize it, and turn it to the advantage of mankind. To this end, this course will trace architecture’s relationship to organizational regimes of modernity such as Fordism, Taylorism, and Post-Fordism, the rise and fall of the machine as an object not to represent but rather to emulate, and the increasing focus on architecture as a matter of process, not product. Throughout, the course will highlight the tension between a drive towards rationalization and an urge to form.

The course has two components: a lecture surveying critical issues through close readings of buildings and a seminar component, led by the teaching assistants, reviewing the week’s lecture and reading while focusing on close readings undertaken by students. Readings will focus on writings by architects while critical texts from both architecture history and outside the discipline establish a context.

Requirements

Students will be evaluated on the basis of their seminar presentation and participation (30%) and on a term paper (70%).

A course reader will be available. Students are also asked to purchase two key texts that should be part of any architect’s library if they do not own them already.

Stanford Anderson, “5 Modern Architecture and Industry, A Cultural Policy of Historical Determinism: Berlin I,” “6 Industrial Design, a Strategy for Unity Technology and Art: Berlin II,” and “7 Architecture for Industry, the AEG Factories: Berlin III,” Peter Behrens and a New Architecture for the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000), 95-164.